Lucid
by FloraOne
Summary: Mamoru meets her in his dreams. Sometimes, rarely, there was a week or two in between where he didn't. Those were the worst. Those were the times where he was terrified he'd gotten better and the hallucinations stopped and he would never see her again. Multichapter fic written for Smutember 2019.
1. Part I

_I'm back for Smutember Week 2 celebrating smut fanfiction and sex-positivity with a small multichapter piece this time! The prompt I used for this one, quite obviously, is "In Your Dreams!"_

_On my tumblr you can find a list for last week's contributions if you want to see them all in one place, if you want more smutember goodness ;) And again, if you liked any of the fics, please leave them some cheering on (so they'll be motivated to write even more for us ;) ;) )_

_Anyway, this fic was actually written because of an ask game on tumblr – a couple months ago or so I played this game where people were to send me a fake fic title and I wrote a short synopsis of a fic idea I would write for it. My wonderful beta, Uglygreenjacket, loved the idea so much she wanted me to write it, so here we are. The fake title (that I didn't end up using) was 'They say dreamers never die'. Some of you might remember this, but for all others, I'll tel you what the synopsis was after Part II, as not to spoil anything!_

_Anyway, on we go!_

* * *

Lucid

Written For Smutember 2019

* * *

Every night, Mamoru tried to hold her in a way that she would never leave. He'd crawl between her legs as someone who tried to make her stay, hold her face between his hands when he kissed her like someone afraid she'd disappear if he didn't give his all.

She always disappeared.

But it didn't keep him away.

And so, he found himself climbing the tree outside her bedroom window like an old, familiar friend, knowing which branch would hold him and which had been cracked a little too harshly by his weight before. He hopped onto her small balcony like someone who knew he could survive any fall and slipped the sliding door open in that silent way like someone who was allowed in at all times but never to be detected.

Her room was littered with moving boxes, but her bed was still the same, and she lay on it on her stomach, with her cheek against a manga, eyes blinking right at him and the window in a slow half-lidded smile that he met with a slow smirk of his own, neither of them saying a word.

He climbed onto her bed and onto her thighs and smoothed his body across her back, pinning her as if to capture her.

She sighed and scrunched up her nose in that adorable little wrinkle and moved her head in that way that made room for him to drag his nose along her throat and inhale deeply with a sigh so devout that it would have been embarrassing would it not have been _her_. It made her hum in that way that sounded like a smile and she curled her fingers between his, pinned to her mattress and enveloped by his form.

Then, she simply stretched a little, dropped her manga to the floor, and moved her free hand up and behind to slip and tangle in his hair.

"I missed you," he breathed against the junction of her neck and the baby hairs that escaped her golden hair buns, then dipped his tongue against her skin and ran his hand up her side between them, slipping beneath her loose shirt to find the creamy skin beneath.

"_Oh_, I missed you, too," she breathed back into the sheets, voice husky and muffled, and she hummed again and arched her back and pushed her butt against the hard-on that had been growing ever since he climbed her tree.

He shuddered, let himself be moved by her bum and pushed back just a little. He felt her answering sigh deep in his gut, causing him to twitch against her cheeks, causing her to sigh and arch again, it was a delicious loop of arousal and he hissed through his teeth when she stemmed her knees into the mattress and pushed against him so hard it lifted him just a little.

She was strong. He wasn't under any illusion that he could hold her here if she chose to throw him off of her, even in this vulnerable position, lying on her stomach, both of his thighs straddling her on either side.

She wriggled her shoulders, she always did when she wanted him to move, and he sat up, sitting on the back of her knees and moved two greedy hands along her short, short, short pajama bottoms, stroking his fingers back and forth along the seams.

He loved this pair, even if not as much as what lay beneath. She wore them often. Softest cotton fabric, pink and yellow print, so short it left the delicious little wrinkled line bare; the line where her legs met her plump, full, gorgeous butt, and his cock throbbed again in his too tight jeans when he dipped his thumbs into the waistband and dragged the fabric ever so very slowly down her creamy thighs, exposing her delicious, flushed and pink ass.

He pushed them down to just above her knees, where his own legs around her kept him from pulling them down further, and sighed in unison with her when he let go of the fabric to stroke his palms slowly but ever so firmly back up the path her pj bottoms had travelled, back up the back of her thighs, his fingers making a little detour stroking across that coveted line where legs became ass, and across her plump cheeks, palms grabby and greedy and kneading ever so slightly.

She never really wore panties under these anymore.

He bent forward all the way with a bitten back groan to greet his dearest friends, five tiniest little dotted birthmarks on her left butt cheek that, would he connect them, could almost form a little heart. He pressed a kiss to each, and then let his tongue do just that, connect the little dots a little too carefully, sighing in reverence.

She giggled. It was tinkling, full-body sound and it moved her little bum-heart against his lips in tiny shudders and he smiled against the soft, soft skin.

"Hi to you, too, Mamo-chan." He could hear the smile and the tease in her voice as she stretched her arms out to cross in front of her head and lay her cheek on them. She wriggled her butt at him while she did that ever so cheekily, and he smiled again and bit into her butt with the barest bit of pressure.

He'd aimed for another giggle. He was surprised to hear a soft little moan instead.

"Mmmmh," she hummed. "Do that again?"

He smirked, he couldn't help it, but instead of biting, he dragged his teeth a little lower, his back arching uncomfortably, along that delicious seam where her ass met her creamy, glorious thighs.

She wriggled her butt at him impatiently, and this time he chuckled out loud.

"How was your week?" he whispered before he pressed his teeth ever so gently back into her full bum.

The back of her head lifted from their perch of their folded arms and she moved up to her elbows, arching her back and throwing him a pout over her shoulder that made him twitch against her shin again.

"Lonely," she mumbled at him, bottom lip out and eyes big and beautiful and irresistible.

He moved a tiny bit back up her body, spread one hand on her butt, stroking slowly, and bent down again to press a line of kisses against the soft skin on the opposite side of her hip. "You don't have to be lonely tonight," he hushed against her skin and she hummed again, nodding her head, while he kissed a line of tiny, slow pecks down to the prettiest of all dimples, the one above her butt on the small of her back.

She made a soft little noise of content and wriggled her butt against, and then she moved as if to turn around, and he practically jumped to sit on her thighs and press his hands into the small of her back, fingers lacing around her waist on either side, keeping her pinned down to the mattress. "No, please," he cried. "Stay like this."

It was her turn to chuckle, and the small sound was just that side of breathy, but she nodded and she arched back against him, throwing her head back just that little bit, and he bent forward to bury his nose in her hair for just a second with an appreciative little moan low in his own throat.

He dragged his palms further up, beneath her loose shirt and up her sides, catching the sides of her soft boobs just barely. He couldn't keep himself from moving his hips and biting his lip when the contact made her moan, and arch her back harder, craning her neck. One long pigtail moved across her shoulder to pool on the mattress in the process.

With her propped up on her elbows like that, arching so eagerly up towards him, it would be so easy to reach around and palm the creamy mounds, but he didn't. Instead, he moved his palms back down her sides, grabbing strong and firm and stroking his hands along her waist. He took his time, revelling in the feeling of his hands moving so slowly across her skin, of her tremors beneath his fingertips, the sensation of the goosebumps that formed on her skin in his wake. Revelled in the small noises he elicited from her, in her tiniest of wriggles, in the way she reacted to his more or less innocent touch with pleaing mewls and writhing movements.

He knew her skin better than his own. Knew every freckle and birthmark and dimple and plane. It sang to him and he could play it fluently, alternating between firm strokes and just the barest touch just with the tips of his fingers, brushes of his lips against her shoulders, his cheeks rubbing against her back, his kiss soft and slow at the nape of her neck.

He hadn't had her all week. He needed to re-acquaint himself with every freckle, every goosebump.

He needed to go slow. He needed to savor. He needed this to last forever.

To the soundtrack of her heavy breathing that steadily grew heavier, and the soft creaks of her bed underneath his knees, clamped around her hips, he moved his hands back out of her shirt to meet at the small of her back again, then dragged them, slow, slow, slow, so innocently now across the fabric and up the strong muscles of her back and shoulder blades, up her throat and down her neck on either side.

She bucked her ass and he rocked his erection back against her once to a soft little cry that fell from her lips, up on her thighs with a bite to his lip, resettling. He settled his painfully detained cock against the naked cheeks of her ass, rubbing the rough jean fabric against her soft skin just barely before settling his full weight back down on her, and reached around and stroked one firm hand up her throat to her chin as he lifted her back flush against his dress shirt, then moved his cheek against hers.

He turned his head to press a kiss to her temple. Her mouth had popped open so deliciously, gasping and mewling with every heavy intake of breath as his other hand moved around as well and stroked firmly and slowly into the neckline of her loose tank top and across her collarbone, just his pinky moving down the soft skin between her breasts but nothing else.

He held her chin firmly while he inhaled the smell of her hair. "How much did you miss me?" he whispered against the shell of her ear.

She bucked her hips against his erection, and he exhaled heavily and open-mouthed into her ear, he couldn't help it.

"You have no idea how much, Mamo-chan," she whimpered. Her hips turned restless, writhing wildly, he could barely hold her still against him. "I miss you _so much_, Mamo-chan. I always miss you so, so much."

One of her hands clawed his arm, the other flying into his hair, a desperateness to her voice that hurt his soul.

"Me too," he whispered, and suddenly there's a lump in his throat, and he reached under her shirt, and brushed his knuckles to stroke the soft side of her left breast.

She cried out immediately, arching against his hand, his knuckles and his thumb stroking so softly.

"Please, Mamo-chan." Her voice broke, and she bucked back against him.

He exhaled harshly against her neck, the arm across her collarbone crushing her tighter towards him in an effort to ground him, to calm down.

"I need to make this last, Usako," he managed to breathe down her neck, his voice ever so slightly apologetic.

"Please," she begged again, voice strained and breathy and her eyes squeezed shut and her hips moving, moving, moving.

His mouth popped open in a silent groan, and he relented. His thumb reached out just that little further, stroked across her nipple as she bucked and rubbed her ass against his clothed erection. He didn't grip her waist, didn't hold her still, and when she arched her back and pushed her breast against his hand and turned her face to settle back into the crook of his neck, lips catching at his throat, he grasped her nipple between two fingers, pinched, then rolled it between the tips the way she liked.

She cried out against his throat, upper lip catching at his throat and dragging. She cried out even harder when he moved his fingers away, stroked the underside of her breast instead, back and forth, back and forth, soft and slow.

"Please, Mamo-chan," she whimpered against his throat, wet and breathy. "_Please_."

He needed to make this last. But he was also so turned on he was shivering from the intensity, and he didn't have a good grip on his control whatsoever, it was slipping like sand through his fingers. It had been a week and they're insatiable.

He wanted to go slow. He wanted to. And yet he bent forward and slammed her back flush against the bed, her fingers curling into the sheets immediately with a relieved sigh and a buck of her ass, and his hand reached back down, back between his own legs, brushing against the painful bulge in his pants to slip between her thighs to probe between her legs.

She was so wet he slipped against her easily, so wet he wasn't entirely sure if he was slipping along her folds or if his finger slipped inside and they both cried out in muffled, broken, shivering sounds.

If he didn't have a grip on his control, her's was completely gone, entirely non-existent. Her hips bucked against him wildly, rocking against him in unrhythmic, searching thrusts.

"More," she cried out, clutching at his hair.

He lifted his hips with trembling thighs and quivering knees to get distance between his writhing hand between her legs and his own erection. But he was still imprisoned against her by his hair in her fist and his mouth against her shoulder blade and so it was an awkward position, but he couldn't not, he'd burst otherwise, and she growled in protest but bucked against his hand instead.

It was her lips, swollen and encasing his fingers snugly and tightly between her closed legs. He found her clit blindly, flicked it. It caused a sharp exhale and the back of her head to sharply hit his face and it hurt, but the smirk was back on his lips instantly and he did it again. This time she _keened_.

He did it again.

"_More_," she cried out, almost a shout, feral.

But he withdrew his hand completely and she growled, her hand pulling on his hair almost painfully, the other punching her mattress. Instead he cupped his own bulge, he needed to rein it in. He needed this to last forever. Please, it needed to _last_.

But apparently this was the last straw, and she twisted around as much as she could with him practically sitting on her ass and grabbed at his shirt to flip him over, eyes fierce and half-lidded and intense.

But gosh, no, if she was to be in control, he wouldn't last a minute, and so he held up his hands, clenched his knees tighter against her butt to brace himself against the onslaught and whimpered a tortured, surrendering, "ok, ok, _ok_!" into her mouth, hands already fumbling with his belt, as she'd reached back awkwardly, half turned, and pulled his face down by his collar and attacked it, and captured his lower-lips with her teeth.

She released his lip with a small pop and a relieved sigh and slumped back down to one elbow, half twisted around, wriggling her butt when his belt fell to the floor with a loud clunk.

She hummed at the sound of his zipper lowering and cursed through her teeth and collapsed back on her stomach fully, forehead hitting the mattress with a hiss between her propped up elbows, when it was finally his cock that he stroked against her instead.

He had to bite his lip so, so painfully. And it was so hard, so, so, very hard not to thrust in to the hilt, grab her hips and slam into her like a madman on crack, but he couldn't. If he did it would be all over and he needed her.

He wanted to keep it slow and yet here he was with his violently trembling hand on the base of his quivering, leaking cock, rubbing it up and down her wetness to her bucking hips with his jeans around his knees.

Her white-knuckled hands were in her sheets and so was her mouth, and her mewls were downright pitiful, so was the way her butt stretched up against him every time his cock rubbed anywhere close to where he could _just push in, just once, just a little_—

"Fuck," he hissed, because it felt too good. It felt too good and he was too weak, way, way too weak, and so he snarled through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut and his hand stilled with his cock at her entrance.

He exhaled in a vibrating 'aaah' to the chorus of her almost obscene moan when he dipped the tip into her. Just a little. Just so much.

He didn't know where he found the self-control in himself to pull back out, and he was seriously concerned for Usagi's old and tattered moon-and-bunnies comforter with the way she clawed at it when she cried out in harsh, haggard, vocal protest, but he was quick to swirl his twitching cock against her clit in tight, hard circles and appease her just a little and she whimpered and turned to goo beneath him, but then he rubbed back up and this time he pushed in all the way.

It was him who cried out brokenly, this time.

She was so tight like this, her legs pinched closed, his own legs straddling her ass, his pulsating cock squeezing between the cheeks of her butt to push into her, rolling his hips against her ass again and again and it was so dangerous that this was probably the most comfortable way he'd ever had her, no strain whatsoever to ground him and keep the sensation away. And he could hear her, _shit_ could he hear her, the muffled sound as she bit the sheets and keened and cried and moaned in lost abandon, begging him to fuck her harder.

He went too fast and too far out and he slipped out of her on accident and down her lips instead, but it helped him regain focus just barely. And she cried out and then cried out again when his hand was back at the base of his cock to tease her clit with the tip, rubbing across and smacking it against her, and he exhaled harshly through his mouth when he brought it back up and plunged himself back home.

He allowed himself a solid ten hard strokes to the soundtrack of her broken, desperate gasps before he pulled back out and she hissed and pounded her fist against the sheets.

He'd long learned what to do here. To keep teasing her until she almost cries, to keep teasing until, when he's burying himself back into her, she pushes back to fuck herself on him in desperation, not letting him go, only for him to then slip back out of her and tease again even when she's shouting words at him by this points, not wanting him to go. To only give in and thrust in hard and fast and strong and keep going when she's so feral she's on her way to turn around and pin him down and take control instead, if he's not giving it to her right now.

It's what he did now, too. It's what he always at least _tried_ to do, when it was in his control. So they could _stay_.

He felt his cue when her walls started to flutter and contract deliciously, overwhelmingly against his cock, when her back grew stiff and her bum stopped moving and she started to hold her breath. He knew she was oh so very close. And so, when she was almost there, he pulled out all the way with a sudden yank, so she couldn't come.

She grunted almost violently, low in her throat, hitting her forehead against the sheets in frustration, raising her bum underneath him to follow his cock, but he pinned her down hard so she couldn't fight it.

Only when her harsh panting slowed did he rub himself back against her. And only when she keened again, swore and pleaded and fell apart, he slammed himself back in, hard and slow, pausing inside to feel her contractions around him, soaking her in, quivering and unraveling on his cock, before pulling out slowly only to plunge back in. Like this he'd bring her there again, so close but never over. He couldn't let her go over.

Repeat until he couldn't.

It was excruciating, hyper-sensitive, overstimulated torture for them both, and yet he kept going, always to that brink of release, to where the threshold almost overtook them, to the point where the rush of orgasm beckoned to just slam into her _once more_ – and then deny them of it.

He tried to hold out with everything he had, biting on his tongue so hard, trying so hard not to come. He needed more. It would be all over if he came.

But his breathing came in harsh pants and the pull just became too much and so he squeezed his eyes shut and curled his hand around her waist and into the side of it in a way that must have hurt her a little, trying so hard to hold on, trying so hard not to come, but it was no good, however hard he tried, he couldn't hold it back.

He finally lost the battle and came with a howl and his cock in his fist, pumping beneath his sheets, and he sat up in his own bed, alone and with ripped open eyes and panting breaths as he spurted out in warm, mocking bursts against his fingers and his pj bottoms, the moon shining through his windows and taunting him.

He flinched, sighed deeply, exhaling harshly through his nose in a huff, glaring at his ceiling.

With a stubborn set to his jaw, he tried to go back to sleep, tried to ignore the sticky, uncomfortable mess between his legs and against his sheets, squeezing his eyes shut.

Of course, sleep didn't return. And even if it did, it was no guarantee he'd be back with her at all, of course.

When he blinked his eyes back open with an even heavier sigh, he had to blink back tears.

With a groan and a loud creak of his mattress, he sat up, wiped himself off on the already messed up sheets and chucked them to the floor next to the bed, then padded to his bathroom in the dark.

The light, when he switched it on, was too bright and too blinding and he grunted and squinted and rubbed his hand over his face. His reflection glared back at him, a little too pale, dark circles beneath his eyes. He looked dramatically, stupidly sad.

Ignoring the accusing look of his reflection, he stripped and chucked his pj bottoms into his hamper, then grabbed a starched and impeccably folded white washcloth from the shelf among identical starched and folded washcloths. He held it underneath the running faucet, rubbed his simple white bar of soap against it and dabbed it against his face, the back of his neck, before he finally lifted his sad and flaccid cock and cleaned until it hurt, glaring at it all the while.

It had been a week since he'd seen her last. A week that had felt like a year, that had left him worried and tense because he didn't know if he'd get to see her again before she moved. Or if this supposed 'move' was his insane brain building up a narrative to get rid of her once and for all. All week it had left him stupidly worried and tense and on edge and apparently also stupendously horny.

He regretted it now – that he couldn't hold out, that he couldn't be patient. Why couldn't he at least have taken his fucking clothes off, or her shirt. Why couldn't he have left all their clothes _on_, goddammit. He wanted to take it back, cuddle her against his chest and talk to her and whisper in her ear all night before he dared to touch her.

He missed her. He missed her so much.

* * *

Mamoru didn't dream of her every night. Most nights, yes. But sometimes, rarely, there was a week or two in between where he didn't. Those were the worst. Those were the times where he was terrified he'd gotten better and the hallucinations stopped and he would never see her again.

The first nights after these were always the most intense.

It wasn't even always at night. Sometimes, very, _very_ rarely, when he'd take a nap during the day, his eyes would open in his dream in her bed in the middle of day, his nose almost touching hers and finding her smile as she curled against him and then onto his chest, and sometimes he'd wake up to her in his bed, or her in front of his door barging in, and open his arms wide when she fell into his arms and it felt like he was whole when he could hold her.

Then he'd wake up alone in his bed and feel lonelier than ever before.

They didn't always have sex. In fact, they didn't for years.

For years they used to just lie there and tell each other of their days. She was rubbish at school and sometimes he would help her with a concept she didn't understand, and he was rubbish with people and she would patiently explain why his classmates' reaction wasn't as obscure as he had previously thought.

She was cluttery and her room was a mess most of the time, there was sticky stuff in her bed and they bickered and sometimes he couldn't understand her at all. She was infuriating and she was chaos personified and her thought processes sometimes drove him up the wall. And she was the most perfect thing he was able to imagine.

He would flirt shamelessly with her until she blushed and hit him in the chest, and she would scoff and make fun of him when he once again didn't know what some certain anime or pop culture reference was, and she would throw him a frown and pop open a page and read to him from shoujo mangas (he used to argue one could not read from a manga like from a book and she'd settle in the crook of his arm and prove him wrong). Or they would curl up and sometimes just look into each other's eyes for hours and say nothing at all, and sometimes everything at once.

He whispered of his loneliness and a boy that lost his memories and never had a home outside of her arms, and he held her for nights and nights and months and months when her father got sick and then slowly recovered. She stroked his hair and the bridge of his nose when he was worried about university and he'd calmed her down when she stressed over graduation finals. He used to tease her endlessly about her study habits and she'd scrunch up her nose and hurl insults at him that curled in his heart and urged him to press his lips against hers and drown her in his kisses.

The first time he couldn't refrain from the feeling anymore and finally kissed his imaginary friend, he thought that was it, he had finally gone insane.

She was his best friend, his confidante, the presence in his dream he confessed every last intimate thought to. He knew he was in love with her. She knew he was in love with her. She knew he wanted to touch her until she cried because he'd confessed it to her over and over across the years. But he hadn't acted on it so far. They hadn't. Not a single kiss. It was his last shred of sanity.

He crossed it spectacularly.

The floodgates had opened and then night after night he got to know her every patch of skin and every nook of her body that made her howl and bite and snarl at him and if this was insanity he never wanted the real world again, he only wanted her moans.

It was one week. Seven nights, night after night, after he had first kissed her in his dreams and explored her further and deeper and more breathlessly, and then he was fucking her every fucking night.

That had been two years ago.

Sometimes they held out, didn't fuck each other's lights out until they hadn't talked at least for a little while. They knew it was over if either of them came. Sometimes they managed to not do it at all. Just talk like old times.

At the moment, she was in the process of moving out of her family home now that her father was finally better, moving in with a friend, and it was stressing her out. He'd only recently cleared his first set of state exams, afterwards he'd been allowed to take classes that finally felt like medicine proper, and it had all stressed him out, too, and she was his only ear.

Sometimes, they managed to stop before either of them came, curl up in each other's bodies, and talk the night through even when he was still inside of her. These were his favorites. When he got to hold her, his face pillowed on her soft breasts and her warm thighs around him, listening to the rumble of her chest as she talked.

Sometimes, the rarest of them all, even if he did come and then woke up snarling, he'd blink his eyes open and return to her when he fell asleep again right away, and they could try again. He wasn't usually that lucky.

He was insane. He knew he was. Schizophrenic, maybe. Some kind of rare, severe sleep disorder at the minimum. He should see a doctor. He needed to. He had an imaginary girlfriend he loved so hard he would die for her. Do anything for her if she asked. He slept a minimum of 10 hours per night and went to bed sometimes when the light was still out just so he could see her more, had done this for years. On days he missed her so much it hurt he just stayed in bed and tried his hardest for sleep to claim him.

He didn't go out to university mixers and he didn't try to befriend classmates very hard. He didn't date and he didn't tell the few friends he had what was going on in his crazy mind.

It terrified him to the bone when he stumbled upon a manga in a Book-Off he had never held in his hand and yet knew front to cover because she'd read it to him a dozen times. It was the first volume of her favorite. He knew it by heart. He'd bought it and read it and it was the same and he despaired for weeks where he could have known it from, where he'd read it and forgotten for his subconscious to use.

It lay on his nightstand. When it was one of the fewer occasions where, in his dreams, they were in his bed and not in hers, she'd grabbed at it in delight and mocked him with mischief in her eyes for buying it, too, then read to him from it.

She just shrugged and whispered 'magic', with a twinkle in her eyes and wriggling her fingers at his face when he confessed his fear about the topic, rambled his worry that he didn't know where he actually knew this manga from, how could he know it, when her endless and eye-rolling mantra of 'because I've been reading it to you, duh!' didn't seem to be fruitful at all to soothe his nerves.

She had that too, she confessed, later, her voice muffled by his collarbone as he moved slowly and languidly inside of her. She always used to remember the things he explained to her for tests, and they were always right.

He thought he'd had a heart attack that one day when he took a different path through a more residential area because he was trying to clear his head, and found himself standing petrified in front of a house he couldn't know.

And he didn't know it. He'd never seen it from that angle. His dreams never started outside of the fence.

But he knew that tree and he knew that balcony and the branches looked wonky where he used to dangle himself off of them in his dreams. His heart had beat so hard he thought he might choke, and he ran and ran and ran all the way home.

He'd never walked that particular path again, too afraid both that he would find that tree and that balcony again and also that it would not be there if he looked for it again, that it was just his hallucinations spilling over into his wakefulness.

* * *

He hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep after he'd woken up last night, and went through his day feeling a little like a sleep-walker who'd run a marathon the previous day.

Also not an unfamiliar feeling, and while his mind regularly battled the fact that really, he shouldn't be enjoying _any_ of this, it was a _condition_ and he _clearly_ wasn't well, he was usually caught in the dilemma instead that while he regretted not getting to spend his limited time with her talking, deep down he couldn't mind the undoubtably spectacularly intense sex his imagination tended to provide for him.

Even with the downright fear he'd developed of achieving orgasms, and the endless riled up state of eternal horny induced by a two-year-long streak of blue-balling himself via his imagination, he could never truly regret the ride.

Especially since he knew it was likely the only sex he'd ever get. His mind was so good at keeping him hooked, other women didn't even tend to register in his peripherie. Not that he hadn't tried.

(Yes, he was totally messed up. He was well aware.)

And so today was another one of these days where he left his bike at home because he didn't trust himself not to fall asleep on it, tried to hide behind his sunglasses, dragged himself from class to class hoping against hope that his notes would at least make SOME sense later on, because really, he hadn't paid so much attention to what he'd been writing down, and the bus back from Keio to central Juuban felt stifling and bombarding to the senses as he stood pressed between people in the late summer air.

He got off two stops early when it just became too much for him and decided to walk the rest of the way to clear his own head and maybe get a coffee. His lonely apartment didn't seem that inviting today anyway.

This was how he found himself trudging up the steps on the side of Crown arcade up to the second story Fruit Parlor. Maybe Motoki was on shift, or even Unazuki. He could use an hour hearing about Reika or college boys or other refreshingly normal human behaviour while he tried to cure his comatose state with caffeine.

He cracked his shoulders, the bones in his spine popping audibly as he trotted through the opening sliding doors with a sigh and his heavy book bag hanging sad and limp from his slumped shoulders, pulling at his merino cardigan in a way he would usually avoid to not damage the fabric.

And this was how he found himself at the counter, in the process of sitting down at one of the familiar old red stools, with heavy bags under his eyes and a headache behind his skull, faced with the impossible.

His heart felt like it stopped. He fell off the stool and caught himself barely back into a stand, nearly dropping his bag in shock.

It couldn't be.

_Don't stare._

It isn't—

She—

She reacted to him too, looked at him wide-eyed. There she was, in an orange Crown apron, golden hair a little messy and clutching the till, looking him up and down slowly with apprehension in her eyes.

_Because you're staring it's because you're staring, stop_ staring—

It's not her. It can't be her.

He barely managed to speak but somehow, he found his voice.

He swallowed. "A latte to go, please."

She looked at him almost unblinking.

Only when he cleared his throat and fumbled for his shades, clumsily slipping them up his nose, did she react with a small jump.

"S-sure," she said. "Coming, um… Coming right up."

He almost choked. Her _voice_ –

It couldn't be.

This girl moved the same. She looked the same. She sounded the same. The nervous flick of her hair, the crunching of of her nose as she worked the coffee machine. It was her her her.

He tried to be normal. Tried to act as if nothing was the matter. Hid behind his shades and put on his poker face. Just a few more moments and he could run.

He nearly spilled his coffee crushing the paper cup when his hand brushed hers when she handed it over, felt like vomiting by the time he'd managed to collect his wits enough to put a high enough bill into the little plastic tray to pay.

He fled without his change and he fled without saying goodbye or thanks or anything.

Out he needed out.

It couldn't be.

The only solution his brain came up with nauseated him.

He must have seen her before. Maybe even at the Crown. He was there a lot, it made sense. He must have seen her there and used her face for the hallucination, and it made him feel like a monster.

A random girl, someone he'd maybe seen countless times and never really noticed, and his brain had taken her image and licked patterns on her buttcheeks in his imagination.

He must have seen her and then projected her very, very attractive face and person into his subconscious.

By the time he found his bearings – his heart still going a mile a minute and his whole body covered in cold sweat – he found himself miles in the wrong direction with no clue what happened to his coffee. It was gone, but he'd never taken a sip.

He'd found himself at home and staring holes into his ceiling for god knows how long but long enough that it was already dark outside, until he blindly reached for his phone and dialed Motoki's number.

When the line connected, he didn't wait for a greeting.

"The blonde girl that works at the Crown what's her name?" he rushed out in one breath.

He could practically hear Motoki's frown.

"Um, hi," Motoki said. And then, with confusion laced into his every word, "No blonde girl works at the Crown, Mamoru."

It felt like a punch to his stomach.

"She was there today! At the Fruit Parlor!" he pretty much shouted down his phone. "Long blonde hair, weird hairstyle, blue eyes, _gorgeous_," he rattled off in an accusing tone. "Who is she?"

"Mamoru. I promise you. The only girls that work at the Crown are Unazuki and Himiko. Himiko has short black hair and brown eyes."

Another slam right into his heart.

Mamoru clicked the call away before Motoki was done speaking.

Were his hallucinations getting _that_ bad?

Mamoru didn't sleep that night. Not a minute of it. And when he zombie'd his way through his morning class, he skipped the rest of classes and walked all the way from Mita to Juuban to the Fruit Parlor.

Sure enough, when he stumbled through the sliding doors, there was a girl behind the counter with a black bob of hair and brown eyes that he vaguely recognized.

Heart pounding in his throat, he ordered a latte.

It was when he'd already paid and turned to go that he found his nerve and turned back to her.

"Um..." he started, his voice all off and hoarse. "Have I… Have I ordered from you before?"

The girl raised both eyebrows and looked at him strangely. "Sure you have. Lots of times," she said. "You're Motoki's friend, right?"

He clicked his mouth shut and frowned and tried again. "Um, I mean, do you remember me from, um… from yesterday?"

The strange look turned even stranger and she looked him up and down. "Um... I'm not sure?"

"But... you, uh," he started, swallowed, started again. "You were working here yesterday? Yesterday afternoon?"

She tilted her head not averting her eyes. "I was, yes...?"

He swallowed. Nodded, wide-eyed. "Right," he murmured. "Nevermind."

This latte, too, somehow disappeared.

* * *

_Anyway I AM DYING TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK IS GOING ON HERE XD. See you tomorrow with Part II (of 3). Reviews are love, let me know what you thought!_


	2. Part II

_So, here you go, here's Part 2 (of 3) that will hopefully answer some questions! (Though lbr some of the things you guys came up with were WAY more creative then this and there are one or two in there I for sure regret not having come up with XD)_

_As always, FOREVERTHANKS to my beta Uglygreenjacket. I've written about 50k words in the past few weeks and she had to beta all of them and she's actually so super busy and I'M SO SORRY LOVE?!_

_ANYWAY. On with the show, and please let me know what you think, again! Thank you so much for your reviews so far!_

* * *

PART II

* * *

Usagi remembered dreaming of him since she was about sixteen. Though she sometimes thought that maybe the prince she dreamt of when she was little, that imaginary prince she'd apparently gone on and on about for years that her parents sometimes still talked about today, might have already been him.

But since she was sixteen, he'd been like a strange sort of diary for years – admittedly, a _very_

strange sort of diary, one she was completely and insanely in love with, but a diary still. A diary she started having regular sex with in her dreams about three years later and then some.

Now, at 22, he was her most nagging secret.

Over the years, she'd considered everything. Astral projection, rifts in time and space, a window to a parallel universe, her soulmate's ghost, a ghost period, her guardian angel, a spirit assigned to her that did a very poor job of staying hidden, a parasite in her brain that manifested as the hottest guy on Earth, an implant that projected his face into her mind by a secret organisation that used her as a test subject for artificially intelligent sex toys without her knowing, echoes of a past lover in a past life who died with her and was now cursed to share her dreams forevermore, someone alive and well and connected to her only in his dreams via your standard mindlink.

Why, yes, she _did _read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi manga, thank you very much.

Or a combination of these. Mindlink to a person who had a parasite in his brain that manifested as Mamoru who astral projected into her dreams. You never knew, right?

Sometimes, she thought she saw him in the crowds. She'd stare at the back of a guy's head on the escalator up to Exit 4 with a pounding heart, or glimpse someone at the supermarket in the corner of her eye that looked like him. There was a little bookshop on Juuban-dori she couldn't pass without holding her breath because when she was 17 she'd spotted someone in there that looked like him exactly and yet she hadn't dared to go in and check for good and now she never dared to go in there period.

She was terrified what she would do if it _were _him.

If she had one wish free it would be to wish for Mamoru to be real. And yet, the thought of him being real, but not knowing her, was somehow worse. Besides, what would she do if she ran in to him, like, for real?

'Hey, you the guy I fuck every night in my dreams, by any chance?'

Yeah, _right_.

The day her worst fear had become real had started innocently enough.

The dream the previous night had been way too short, especially since she'd been on edge because of the move and it had been a week since she last dreamt of him and missed him like crazy, and even if it had been extremely exciting to say the least it left her just on the brink of coming as per usual and thus quite frustrated and lonely in her bed when she was yanked from it so suddenly.

Lately, with all the moving stress, she'd dreamed of him less and less. And she refused to let his freak-outs get the better of her. It wasn't a sign this was coming to an end, it couldn't.

However, sometimes it felt like he had a tendency to freak out so she didn't have to. If, unlikely but if, she did make him up after all, or if maybe he was a defense mechanism that _everyone_ had in their mind but no one dared to talk about, then maybe that was his way to protect her from anxiety. Mamoru was a fitting name for that endeavor after all. And if that was the case, then his freaking out meant it was really her freaking out, and maybe she was just afraid of change.

Anyway. Fucking hot sex that managed to get her mind off her stress rather spectacularly well and then poof, gone way too soon last night.

Still, so far, nothing out of the ordinary. She'd gone back to sleep, tossing a bit, woke up with Luna's butt on her face when she'd overslept and her kitty demanded food from her in her oh so charming ways, wrote a few hurried sentences with a flushing face into her dream diary, gotten a compliment on the metro for her cute outfit, did her shift at Joypolis that was thankfully on the shorter side where on top of that no one had scolded her for being late, bought a donut that looked like a unicorn on her way home, and made a stop at the Fruit Parlor to chat with Unazuki.

All in all, a good day. Yet, this was where her nightmare struck and came to life.

The last time Usagi had seen her, Unazuki had just met a guy at a party that she swore she was gonna marry one day, made out with in the ladies room, found he couldn't kiss very well, and then ghosted him for the next week. A party, mind you, that Unazuki had actually wanted to take Usagi to, since apparently a ton of medical student friends of Motoki's were in attendance, but the friend in question Unazuki had wanted to set her up with for what seemed like for_ever_, to Usagi's great relief, had once again declined the invitation.

(Usagi had once, quite stupidly, made the mistake of answering the question of what her type was with 'medical student, apparently'. She was supernaturally attracted to one specimen of those, after all – even if she didn't dwell on the weird of it too much – big freak-outs were Mamoru's forte, after all. Usagi went with the flow, instead.)

This time, Unazuki basically melted into a puddle of gratitude and joy upon spotting Usagi the second she stepped through the sliding doors.

"_Usagi-chan_!" Unazuki yelped, raising her arms, phone in hand, crooking a finger at her. "My darling friend, my saviour, my super heroine! Help! Please!"

Usagi's eyebrows rose to her hairline in apprehension, yet she let herself get pulled behind the counter.

"Um…"

But Unazuki had already pulled her to her and grasped both her hands.

"Please, if you consider me your friend," Unazuki said ominously, intensely, seriously. "I need your help. It's just like, 10 minutes."

Usagi blinked. "Um, …ok?"

And with that, Unazuki's arms flew up and she squealed and threw her arms around Usagi and pressed her lips in a sound kiss against her temple with a '_thank you, thank you, thank you_!' that still left Usagi quite confused but admittedly very charmed and she couldn't help the small giggle that escaped her, even when she was righted by the shoulders and Unazuki's orange Crown apron was thrust unceremoniously over her head and pulled down her form.

With a small yank, she was turned around, the big orange bow in the back was fastened to her body by Unazuki's harried movements, Usagi's bag was grabbed from between her hold and chucked beneath the counter, and Unazuki rambled in rapid-fire-speed.

"—completely forgot I had to work today and it's a once in a lifetime _chance_, if I don't go _now_ it's _done_, Usagi, poof and _bye_, and Himiko just didn't have the _time_ – _anyway_, here, the coffee machine is _easy_, I promise, and if anything else gets ordered just tell them to wait, Himiko will be here in like, 5 minutes to relieve you and anyway, you're saving my life, girl, you know that? And—"

Usagi barely had time to blink, and yanking her from place to place by her arm Unazuki showed her the button for the coffee machine and the shortcut for coffee orders on the till with a chipper, 'there, easy!' and a repetitive rendition of, 'just five minutes, you'll see, might be nobody even wants something' and like a whirlwind, disappeared through the sliding doors like the manifest vision of 'K, THXBYE!'.

Usagi was left to helplessly blink after her friend. After ten minutes, Himiko still hadn't arrived. Yet thankfully, from working at Osa-P that one summer, she did know how to work a till, and the coffee machine really _was_ just a button, and thanks to Mako-chan, she knew how to foam up milk, and really, this was kind of ok. Plus, so far it really had only been two customers with very simple orders…

And then Mamoru walked through the door, and her heart stopped.

She clutched at the till like a lifeline, helplessly staring at him as he made his way to the counter, but there was no doubt. No doubt in the world. This was him, this was Mamoru.

He only looked up when he was already at the counter, and for a second, a thrilling, terrifying, exhilarating second, she thought maybe he recognized her too. He stumbled a bit.

He looked tired, his face a little pale, but it was _him_. Him, him, him, no doubt about it.

But the look in his eyes was completely stoic, completely blank and unreadable, and then he ordered a fucking coffee.

"A latte to go, please," he said, voice strong and unwavering and like nothing was the fucking matter.

Oh god, his _voice_.

She was drowing in his eyes and dying inside because _yes_, this was Mamoru, but he didn't fucking recognize her, and the _things_ she remembered this voice _saying_ to her when she was just on the brink of exploding, and fuck, what was _happening_—

Through some weird miracle, she found her voice.

"S-sure," she stuttered, flushing head to toe. "Coming, um… Coming right up."

With wide eyes and a pounding heart she turned her back a bit too fast and filled the aluminium can with milk and her hands shook so violently she was surprised any of that landed in the pot at all.

Behind her was the man she loved, and he had no clue who she was, and she was making him a fucking latte that wouldn't even taste well, she knew it, because she'd never made a fucking latte in her life.

Her heart pounded in her ears when she turned back and somehow managed to hand him what at least appeared to be a drinkable beverage and she jumped so hard when his fingers brushed hers she nearly spilled it all over him.

Blushing to the roots, she mumbled a thanks when he slipped a bill into the plastic tray and hid behind the till, but when she looked back up to try and maybe talk to him, he was already half out the door.

"Ma—" she attempted to shout after him, then snapped her mouth shut.

_Fuck_.

Her heart wouldn't calm down.

Mamoru. That was _Mamoru_.

She was still a freaked out mess when, shortly after, Himiko came running through the door, apologizing profusely, hands on her thighs and breathing hard, and that she'd run all the way to get here earlier and Unazuki had called her and warned her but she couldn't _believe_ Unazuki had just _left_ Usagi there, and had it been ok at all? And—

Mamoru. She just sold a fucking latte to Mamoru. And she didn't even fucking _work_ here.

And he didn't know her. He was out there, right here, down the street right now, and he didn't know her.

* * *

_"__I wish it were different."_

_On her lavender comforter, curled up face to face but not touching, his eyes reflected her sadness exactly. Just their noses almost touched but not quite, and somehow it felt like an unconquerable distance, even if all it would take was for one of them to lean over just slightly. _

_She had her hands underneath her cheek and so did he, and she could feel his breath on her lips when he exhaled._

_"__What of it?" he asked quietly._

_Her lips pressed into a tight pout, and he snuggled a little into his hands, his eyes watching her closely._

_"__I wish I could actually have you," she whispered. "I wish I could sit in my favorite coffee shop and you would actually walk by and see me and join me and kiss me on my actual lips. I wish I could call you whenever I want to and there would be your voice that answers. I wish I could date you. I wish I could introduce you to my friends, and stress over introducing you to my Papa. I wish I could wake up in your arms and not alone."_

_He exhaled slowly, eyes sad._

_"__I wish you were real," she finished oh so quietly._

_He threw her a look and a smile, to which she rolled her eyes and fought a stubborn smile._

_"__I know, I know," she said. "'You've got it wrong, you're the one who's the dream'," she quoted him with a lowered voice that did nothing to mimick him even slightly well, and he smirked in return._

_"__What can I say?" He tilted his head ever so slightly on his hands. "You're the perfect woman. My male fantasy. Of course, you'd have to be _my_ imagination."_

_She pursed her lips. "Right. I forgot you think you're insane."_

_He shrugged._

_She huffed. "Mamo-chan… you know my address. Come get me."_

_He smiled, didn't say anything. But then one of his hands reached out and twirled his finger around a blonde lock of stray hair that lay between them._

_"__I mean it," she whispered, her tone a little pressed, a little desperate. "If YOU are real, and I'm real, too, then come and get me."_

_"__Hmmmm." He sighed in that melancholy way. His finger curled and curled around her strand of hair, eyes turning sadder. _

_"__It doesn't count when you only started saying these things after I know there's a house that fits, you know," he mumbled to it, a few silent moments later. "My subconscious is such a clever manipulator…"_

_His eyes flicked back up to hers, tragically sad._

_She threw him a glare. Leaned forward to poke his nose with hers._

_His lips quirked into a quick smile, and then just as quickly fell._

_He sighed, long and harsh._

_"__I wish it were different, too, Usako. So much."_

* * *

Usagi's dream diaries were full of treasure. They were filled with kisses and promises and sparkling eyes beneath her bedsheets, filled with her softest memories and everything she yearned for most.

And all of them were currently strewn around her bed.

Over the years she'd filled more than dozens of them. Some, especially the ones in the beginning, held his word for word hushed confessions, others were quick descriptions of what it felt like to be close to him but little more. Her accounts varied in lengths and detail and became gushy and longer again at the time they'd started to be intimate. Her entry on their first kiss alone was 7 pages long.

Each of them started with a date in the margins. Sometimes it was just keywords that followed, hurried notes meant simply to jumpstart a memory, sometimes it was unconnected things he'd said that resonated with her, words from his lips she didn't want to lose even if she didn't have the time to write a full account.

The dates were spaced out more lately, though, however hard she glared at them to change that fact by sheer willpower or her irritation conveyed through piercing eyes.

The dates in her current diary did not change, of course.

Neither did the fact that the day she'd sold him a fucking latte, she hadn't dreamt of him afterwards.

She'd gone to bed with the light still out and a pounding heart and yes, it had taken her forever to fall asleep, she'd been too worked up, but once she had, she'd slept 8 hours, and he wasn't there and it scared her shitless.

She needed to see him. She sold him fucking coffee, she needed to talk to him goddammit.

She hadn't dreamt of him the next night either. Or the naps she forced herself to take right in the break room at Joypolis.

Maybe she'd killed the magic. Maybe it only worked if they never saw each other. Maybe by seeing him, she'd broken an ancient, supernatural curse they'd been under. Maybe she lost him.

She shook her head sharply, willed the thought away. In the process, her gel pen had left a big red mark on the page where she'd written the last keypoint in her spiral notebook.

_Never specifically names his university, but it's somewhere close to where he lives; he can choose whether to take a bus, walk, or ride his motorcycle. _

Her laptop lay propped open. Google maps showed the way too many universities in Tokyo that had a medical faculty and a campus in a closer radius to Tokyo Tower.

She wanted it to be Juuban, but she couldn't be so sure. The view out his window showed Tokyo Tower, but that could still include Juuban, Roppongi, Hiroo, Mita, Shinbashi, Shiba, Toranomon…

She sighed. Stupid Tower that was visible from all cardinal points and always looked the same. Stupid Usagi that had never taken the time to make out other distinctive buildings in his view while she dreamt of being fucked silly on his bed only to then proceed to write down the view and not the sex when she woke up.

Tokyo Medical University, University of Tokyo, Bunka Gakuen University, Keio University, St. Luke's International University, Nishogakusha University, Tokyo Health Care University Gotanda, Seisen University…

Stupid Toyko with too many schools all in the center. Bah.

But he _had_ showed at the Crown and that _was_ in Juuban and _maybe_…

Finding the university, she reckoned, would be her best bet. It was definitely more helpful than most of the other way too few key points she'd managed to gather from her dream diaries that glared at her in bright red gel from the pages of her notepad.

_His door is green._

Right. Thank you very much. So, so helpful.

She'd cursed herself for not asking more specific things over the years, for not paying closer attention to her dream surroundings, for not pressing harder when he didn't talk about these things. They'd been talking about the location of her parent's house so often, since it was such a sore point for him, and yet she'd never _asked_—

And all of this was to say that the things Mamoru said in her dreams were actually accurate. If they weren't, this would all be for nothing. Maybe the _real_ Mamoru lived somewhere completely different, did completely different things.

She glared at the only points she'd gathered from her brief and horrifying Crown encounter with him.

_Wore sunglasses and a fancy looking fine burgundy cardigan with black buttons._

Next to it, scribbled doodles of what she remembered both of those to look like.

Hours of google image searching later and trying to trick her brain into being helpful and not just seeing what she wanted to see but actually remembering, she was half sure it had been Ray Bans and a V-neck cardigan from Uniqlo and those were sold fucking everywhere and helped her exactly not at all.

But there were a few key points left that could maybe help her after all.

_He dislikes his professor for gynecology, and he sees him every Monday morning first thing._

It took her forever, and some very suspicious and vague phone calls with Ami to help her out what certain class names even _meant_ and if they were in the right field, but in the end she had come to the conclusion that only the Tokyo Medical University and Keio had Monday morning classes from a professor of gynecology. And thanks to Ami she now knew where they were held.

Even if he didn't know her, too... If she found him, she could make the love of her life fall in love with her, too, if she just tried hard enough, right?

She called a colleague to swap shifts with her for the next two Mondays, and then she tossed a coin with where to start. It landed on Keio.

* * *

She'd even gotten to that stupid class _early_. She'd sat in the back and in clear view of all doors and she'd watched all of the students filing in like a hawk. And when the doors closed and the professor started class (and god, yes, that guy was an _asshole_, it _must_ be him), she'd told herself that maybe he was just late.

Every time the door timidly opened and a late-comer slipped into class, her heart pounded like a jackhammer. But none of them was him.

And when the class let out and she watched the doors again, rooted to her spot (maybe she'd just _missed_ him in the crowd?) and waited until the last student had left the lecture hall and new ones filed in for a next class, she left the building with dejection in her shoulders, telling herself she still had next Monday and the next university.

But her list still had more to give, and, folded in her pocket, it felt like a good luck charm. She didn't have to wait for next Monday, she still had more leads to try. Better safe than sorry.

_There's a tiny and quiet cafeteria on his campus that serves only coffee and cakes right behind the library, and he likes to hide out there between classes._

Keio _had_ a small cafeteria right behind its main library and it _did_ only serve coffee and cakes and maybe this was still the right school, and he'd just overslept? Or maybe she'd misunderstood, and he no longer had to take that class?

She camped out on one of the big armchairs right by the picture window, turned so she could watch the doors, and sat in there with her her legs folded underneath her and a slice of strawberry shortcake or three on her plate and stayed for hours.

But when the cafeteria closed at three and he hadn't been there, her hope started to die down. Texting Minako back about the curtains for their new apartment, she sat at the bus stand waiting for the one that would bring her back to Juuban and punched her answers a bit too angrily into her phone.

When the bus finally approached, she jolted up when out of the corner of her eye she saw someone with the right height run up to the bus stop, but when she turned to look, there was no one there.

She sighed, got on the bus, and banged her head against the orange hand-rail in frustration.

Maybe if she camped outside the Fruit Parlor? That's where she'd seen him after all…

* * *

_So there you go ;) Mamoru thinks he's insane, Usagi thinks she's in a Sci-Fi Novel. Part III (the last part and solution to this) will be with you tomorrow!_

_As promised, here's the original synopsis I wrote for the fake fic titles game that started this all:_

_They say dreamers never die: Usagi and Mamoru have never met in person. But every night they meet in their dreams. They bicker there, they flirt there, they fall in love there. It's weird, they think they're going a little insane, but they don't ever wanna lose this. So they never tell anyone, and at night (and in very frequent naps) they live in their dreams. 3 years later, they meet by chance and are very very very confused and even more intimidated and OBVIOUSLY too scared to say, Oh, hi, are you my girlfriend by any chance?!_

_Anyway, reviews are love, let me know what you think?_


	3. Part III

_And here we go, the last part to this little ride! I really hoped you enjoyed it! Let me know what you think about the use of this trope! I'll be back with more smutember fics for you soon. _

_Thanks as ALWAYS to my lovely beta, Uglygreenjacket, who has her hands full with me! _

_And when I post this it's going to be midnight where I live and thus Sep 12th: So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TINA CENTURY AND CHANGELINGTUMBLR! _

_So, enjoy!_

* * *

Part III

* * *

That was it. He'd lost his marbles. Gone off the deep end. All the cheese fallen off his cracker. He was delusional. Acute psychotic episode, definitely.

He saw Usagi _everywhere_.

After his hallucination at the Crown, and his following day of panic, he'd sleeplessly hyperventilated his way through his weekend, telling himself that if he maybe never slept a day in his life again, maybe he'd get better.

Come Monday, it got worse.

Apparently, his mind had now taken a free pass to paste her face onto any person anywhere. Projected her into his perception of reality at every corner.

When he walked into class on Monday morning, early as always, he froze when he saw her sitting down right in his seat in his pelvic examination course. He'd walked backwards out the door and fought a panic attack in the library.

He'd calmed himself down by reviewing his oncology notes, and by the time his genetics seminar rolled around, he seemed to have somewhat regained his composure; he didn't hallucinate her onto any of his classmates either way, and on his way to his obstetrics lecture, he figured maybe it was just the insomnia. Maybe it was gonna be ok.

But when he walked across campus back to the library to get a coffee after class, he stopped petrified in front of the large picture windows, staring right at her. Right inside, right in his favored armchair with her face turned away from him and to the door, in the windows of his favorite cafeteria there she sat, front and center. He nearly broke down.

He only made it halfway through his last class, left after only an hour of it (he couldn't concentrate anyway), and ran after his bus lost in thought, only to skid to a halt right behind her.

There she sat. At his bus stop. Muttering at her phone.

He stood staring helplessly at the back of her head and her slightly loose, so very touchable Odangos while she looked to her left with that adorable, scrunched up nose as if searching for someone, and then got onto his bus line with a shake of her head.

He let it drive away without him and collapsed where she'd sat, head in his hands.

He walked all the way home and slept the rest of the day away, woke up with a pounding heart right when it would have been time to go to sleep and read up on schizophrenia for the rest of the night.

Apparently the first episode of psychosis usually tended to happen around late adolescence and early adulthood (right on track, oh joy), had a very high chance to be chronic (Usagi _had_ stuck around in his head rather dominantly, yes), pre-morbid phases already showed signs of at-risk mental states, even if onset can be abrupt and so its progression (and if _this_ wasn't abrupt deterioration, he didn't know what was). Prognosis unpredictable, treatment consisted of managing symptoms and avoiding relapse.

Oh, yay.

It didn't stop on Tuesday. Nor on Wednesday or Thursday.

The french bakery in Juuban where he got his favorite bread; she sat outside on the iron chairs staring into the other direction of the street. The specialist medical bookshop across town where the learning scripts for some of his lectures where printed on Wednesdays; she stood outside dangling her foot playing some kind of Candy Crush inspired game.

He saw her at traffic lights, on the platform of his metro station, sitting on the balustrade of a pedestrian bridge on his morning jogging route.

Once, his vision of her even saw him back. Reacted just like Usagi would have if it had really been her. On the metro he'd run after and missed and the doors had just so closed in his face; when he'd looked up she'd stood startled in the door with her palm spread against the glass and shock in her eyes, looking after him and pressing herself all the way against the door to see him better and longer as it drove off from the platform and away from him.

And all throughout, he was both terrified to fall asleep, and missed her so hard he wanted to curl into a ball on his bed and cry until he fell unconscious to finally wake up in her arms.

Maybe he should just let it all happen. So he had a made-up girlfriend. So he saw her everywhere now. So what. He loved her. He was happier with her.

And so, when sleep finally got the better of him at a time that sleep should be a thing, he was so relieved to see her he legit started crying.

But her lips were already there, attacking his mouth through his tears as if she was as relieved to see him as he was, slipping her fingers against his scalp and climbing on top of him, rolling him with his back flush against her comforter, moving boxes around him just that little bit fuller.

His lips chased her mouth in a kind of frenzy every time she broke for breath or kissed up the side of his face instead.

"Where," she started, broken up by a hard kiss against the corner of his eye, catching his tears "have you" – another kiss – "been?!"

His snort was wet and chortled through his tears, and he held her shoulders through her assault of his face.

"Right here," he said, and puckered his lips when hers touched his on her path back down his face, then huffed harshly. "Going crazy as fucking always."

With that she withdrew, sat up ever so slightly, perched above him, straddling his sides. Her eyes were full of concern as her hands cupped his cheeks and her thumbs brushed against the wet patches underneath his eyes.

He didn't usually curse in front of her like that. That was more her thing. Apparently, it was cause for her concern.

For the first time since he dreamt of her the silence was loaded. He'd never had any reason to be uncomfortable, of course. He was talking to his own head, there was nothing to be ashamed of here, nothing to hold back, and yet now he was. Ashamed. So very, very ashamed.

Her thumbs rubbed across his face and somehow it just made the tears come harder, even when he brought his own hands up to helplessly clutch at her wrists and hold her hands steady against his face lest she got any ideas to withdraw.

He saw her swallow, her own eyes shining. "I've been looking for you everywhere…"

"Yeah?" He snorted. His voice turned sarcastic. "Oh, I hadn't noticed."

She frowned down at him, sat up just a little straighter on his lap and her hands slipped from his hold and down to his chest.

He blinked up at her, regretting his tone immediately and with a hitch in his breath he chased her hands, grabbed them in a tight hold and held them against his heart.

Her face was framed by her twin streamers of blonde hair that cascaded down towards him, her eyes were so wide and sad, and he swallowed.

"When are you moving?" he whispered instead.

Her brow furrowed. She didn't answer right away.

"Next week hopefully," she said eventually. She made to move off of him, but he jerked and shook his head with startled eyes, and so she didn't. "The landlord keeps pushing back the date, says something's taking longer with renovations. It's driving Mina-P insane. I'm worried, too."

He nodded, the flutter of anxiety curling around his insides like a snake, tightening it's hold.

Her eyes grew soft, and one hand escaped from his chest to move back to his cheek.

"Do you still think I'm moving out of your head? Cause boy, let me tell you, do I have—"

"I'm terrified," he whispered, interrupting her.

She shook her head.

"I promise, you're not crazy," she whispered back.

He snorted again. It sounded like a wet whistle. Yeah, right.

She shook her head again, more vehemently, her thumb rubbing back against his face.

He hesitated. It was a bad sign if you were afraid to seem insane in front of the person you made up in your head, right?

"It's getting worse," he whispered. "It's getting out of control."

She licked her lips, eyes a little wild. "Like when you saw my house?"

"Like when I saw your house. I'm going insane."

She shook her head. "Mamo-chan…"

Then she trailed off, threw her head back and blinked at the ceiling.

When her eyes were back on his, they looked determined. "What if _I_ came to get _you_?" she said.

He held her gaze. "You are, aren't you?"

But this made her frown in confusion. For a brief moment, she looked at the hand still held by both of his on his chest, then back into his eyes.

Her voice was so small when she spoke.

"If you didn't know me, do you think you'd want me?" she asked.

The question was ludicrous.

"I'd always know you, Usako."

Her hair shook around him. "If you didn't, would you?"

She was his dream woman. He made her up to be perfect. "I can't _not_ want you," he said with a frown.

The hand that held his cheek twitched, and she exhaled through her nose. Then, after what seemed like an internal debate, she bent back down and pressed her lips back against his.

It was slower this time, not as frantic. He sighed into her kiss, kissed her back like someone isolated getting their first glimpse of freedom in weeks; reverent, worshipful, hesitant.

Surrendering to her was like giving up and finding peace every time.

She captured both his face and his lips once more, both cheeks trapped between her tender, tender hands and her soft lips brushing against his softly; sweet and slow and heart-achingly beautiful. The kind of kiss he could only imagine. The kind of kiss that made him feel full and unconditionally loved and he whimpered into it even when her puckered lips met his again, brushing softly, catching against his lower lip and slipping against them in the tenderest of touches.

He sighed, eyelids fluttering, and her kisses wandered, trailing like feathers along his cheek to his chin, his jaw, back to his lips, her hands never letting go of his face.

Her eyes were soft and understanding when she withdrew just a smidgen, just so he could blink open his eyes and see her right in front of him, this vision.

She didn't quite let go of him, just slipped her hands from his face and down his form, never withdrawing.

He sat up with her hands still on him and so did she, and when her hands had finished their journey down his torso, they caught in the hem of his henley.

He held his arms up dutifully and she rose to her knees to get it off of him.

When his gaze was freed from the fabric she was right there, eyes so blue and so near and dropping a small and soft kiss to his nose even when her hands were already at his belt buckle and then the button of his pants.

He followed, rose to his knees, too, pushed his own hands into the sides of his jeans to help her along, moved to navigate his legs to help her pull them off. Sighed when her hand moved into the waistband of his boxer briefs and along his butt before these were drawn down his legs as well. Stared in unobstructed, uninhibited wonder when she rose to her knees between his legs again and, holding his gaze, lifted her own blouse over her head, then undid the small fabric belt of her dressy pants and pushed them down her hips, leaving her only in blush coloured lace.

He bent forward with a reverent sigh and kissed one nipple through the thin, overtly transparent fabric before stroking his fingers just underneath the elastic underband of her bralette, where soft creamy skin met fabric, but before he could lose himself to the touch, she'd pushed him back onto his back by his shoulders, stripped off the rest of her underwear, and straddled him again.

He drowned in her hair and her lips and her skin and held her a little too close, a little too fierce as she rubbed herself on him and brought her lips back to his.

She was still brushing her fingers against his cheeks when she finally sank down on him and he exhaled in harsh puffs of breath that she caught with her mouth.

"I love you," she hushed against his lips, warm and breathy and wide-eyed, her forehead on his, bent over as she rode him just barely, sat on him buried deep within her, and he lifted his own hands and held her face just the same way.

"I love you, too," he answered like a promise, like a prayer, like a plea.

Her hips moved painfully slow, even when she lowered down in his embrace, held him in the tightest hug as she kept rocking her hips against his.

"Tell me where to find you," she whispered in his ear. "Please. Where are you?"

He hugged her back, his hands clutching at her back and her hair, cheek to cheek.

"I'm right here."

* * *

In the end, it really was so easy.

Before it got there though, Usagi was a sad puddle of despairing goo.

_I'm right here, my ass. _

She'd gone through all her clues, and she'd been so sure that she'd gotten at least _some_ of them right… Except maybe dream-Mamoru just wasn't real-Mamoru after all, and all her clues were worthless.

She spent a couple evenings eating ice cream straight from the container while watching sappy romance movies and bawled her eyes out until even Luna looked at her in pity.

And when she looked into her mirror and saw the sad state her hair was in and the sad state her smile was in and decided that Friday evening was as good a start as any to accept defeat, and she called Unazuki back who'd been begging her to come to her party.

She agreed on the one condition that Unazuki wouldn't try to set her up with Motoki's friend again and she'd agreed.

Sighing her way through the bus ride, Usagi knocked on Unazuki's door in her pretty white blouse and smashing fake-leather leggings and Mako's killer fruit punch in her hands and at least she felt cute.

Unazuki greeted her with an over-exuberant hug, and she waved at Reika in the kitchen when she dropped off the punch, and then Unazuki excitedly pulled at her arm, winking in that totally over-dramatic way that left Usagi absolutely confused, telling her there was a man here she just absolutely _had_ to meet.

With sudden, terrifying clarity, Usagi understood what was going on.

"Funny story," Unazuki started, pulling her through the crowd with a wink and determination.

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no.

But Unazuki simply ignored her look of absolute horror and went on, weaving her through the crowd. "That day I forced you to man the till? Motoki told me today he got the _weeeirdest_ phone call that day, and guess who it was?"

"Oh god, Unazuki, please, you _promised_, I _told_ you I'm not looking for anyo—"

But then the word died on her throat. Because she _was_ looking for someone, and Unazuki had just pushed her right in front of him.

Mamoru. In his black jeans that she'd once pulled off of him with her teeth. With his soft and gorgeous hair falling into his eyes, looking at her like, like…

He was looking at her like he'd seen a ghost.

Or something else equally deeply terrifying. Not really like a stranger, really, more like… like… Wait, maybe he _does_ know her. Maybe _his_ secret agency artificially intelligent sex toy implant that featured _her_ face was a total bitch and he really _hates_ her?

Yes. Yes, she _was_ freaking out.

Oh god. This was it. Calm down. God, Usagi, calm down. Be charming. Don't spook him. He's only your soulmate or something. Pretend you don't know him. _Get_ to know him. _Shit_dammit.

"Mamoru," Unazuki said brightly, "This is Usagi. Usagi, Mamoru."

Where he'd previously looked petrified, he now seemed to choke or something.

"Y-your name," he stuttered. "Your name is _Usagi_?"

Usagi flushed. Oh god, what did she do?! Act normal, act _normal_—

Something that, admittedly, he _wasn't_ doing.

Unazuki was in the process of stepping back and leaving them to it when Mamoru, almost panicked, grabbed Unazuki's arm.

"What does '_Usagi'_ look like?"

His eyes looked wild, and pale, and like he was going to start wheezing at any moment, and the way he intoned her name absolutely strangely, as if checking to see if he'd really heard it right, as if…

_Wait_.

"Um," Unazuki said, furrowing her brows and looking at him strangely. "You didn't drink _that_ much, Mamoru, right?" she said with a laugh, shaking her arm free and he let go of her as if burned.

_It's getting worse. It's getting out of control. Like when I saw your house. I'm going insane—_

Usagi's heart picked up a mile a minute.

"Nevermind," he said, swallowing, shaking his head, but his wide eyes never left Usagi.

"It's nice to meet you, Usagi," he whispered instead.

Unazuki's smile returned immediately and she clapped them on their shoulders, startling them both. "Right! Have fun!" she cheered, and with that, she was off.

Leaving them to stare at each other rather awkwardly, the silence dragging.

Uncharacteristically self-conscious, Usagi pushed a stray lock behind her ear and caught his eye in a way that meant to follow, and moved closer to the window, a corner more secluded.

The way he _followed_ her was…

She swallowed.

Then she squeezed her eyes closed and rummaged for her bravery.

"This is gonna sound strange," she started.

His lips popped open. He stood a bit too close, his eyes still a bit too wide the way they looked down at her as if she was a fucking hallucination.

"But," she said, biting her lip. "Do you know me?"

His eyes blew up. It looked like he wasn't breathing.

"_Mamo-chan_," she whispered, her hand reaching out, hovering just by his shirt. "Do you … do you _know_ me?"

She looked up at his gasp, and his hand flew up and clutched hers, then pressed it against his chest.

And suddenly, his face and voice were completely calm.

"I'd always know you, Usako."

She pulled her hand away from him as if shocked, pressed both hands against her mouth while still looking up, tried to keep her eyes from exploding in tears, breathing harshly.

He exhaled through his mouth. It sounded a little shaky, and then he tilted his head down a little, and smiled.

"Have you moved yet?" he asked.

She shook her head, fast and incredulous and mute.

How did he— Wasn't he the one who—

"How are you so calm?!" she hissed – and forgot to be hesitant. Her hand was back against his shirt, curling in the fabric.

He shrugged. "If I've gone off the deep end, I think I decided I like it here?"

She shook her head at him, gave a sound somewhere between a laugh and snort and cry and then she pulled at his shirt, and his hands on her cheeks and his lips on hers felt _exactly_ like they always did, _exactly_ like his kiss was supposed to feel and taste and be, and she puffed a sharp, little, crazed laugh into his mouth and kissed him harder.

Somewhere around them someone wolf-whistled, low and sarcastic. Other than that, no one really reacted or gave them a second glance. No one noticed that this was a friggin miracle, the most crazy and romantic thing that would ever happen to her, her dream come literally to life and kissing her, he was _here_ and he was _kissing_ her.

It was him. He was here. These were his lips. She'd never let him go.

He let her go with a pop of his lips and she growled.

"You _are_ real, right?" he asked with wide eyes and wet, red, swollen lips, clutching at her waist.

"Yes," she breathed, pulling him back down to her. "Yes, I'm very, very real."

* * *

_Fin_

* * *

_(So yeah they're never figuring out why this actually happened to them HOW COULD THEY? XD Anyway I love a few of the ideas you guys came up with in the reviews: Maybe it's all leftover Elysion Dream Magic, maybe it's a version of Endymion's mythical sleep curse. Or whatever you want it to be. Imagine what you will, they'll never find out, they just learn to live with it ;) )_

_Also they'll have a really hard time telling people how they met I guess, lol. (But I suppose they always have that problem in most universes anyway lol. Definitely in canon.)_

_ANYWAY. I hope you liked this little adventure, I had a lot of fun writing it. Reviews are still love, and I really, really, really love to hear from you guys ALWAYS!_


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